Silence, Named

I spent Thursday doing an amount of housework my flat has not seen since I moved into it, and at six I stopped and understood that I had cleaned the hall.

He was not going to be in the hall. He was going to be in the kitchen, which is the only room in that flat with two chairs at the same table, and which I had not touched. So I cleaned that as well, and put out the good glasses, and then put them away again, because putting out the good glasses is a sentence. By half past seven I had prepared four faces and rehearsed the first thing I would say in three languages.

Whatever else I did that evening, I did not arrive at it innocent. I had a plan and the plan had versions.

He came at eight. He did not bring anything. He took his…